


To begin or continue a course of action, or do something as a natural or seemingly inevitable next step

by AnnaAalora



Series: Life in Another World [3]
Category: Another World | Out of this World (Video Game)
Genre: Alien/Human Relationships, M/M, POV Second Person, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6605116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaAalora/pseuds/AnnaAalora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You hadn't meant to come out this far on your own. Now you just wish you could find your way back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To begin or continue a course of action, or do something as a natural or seemingly inevitable next step

The stairs are slick in some places and crumbling apart in others, so you each step you take is weighed with careful deliberation. You wish there was some sort of handhold in place, but you settle for hugging the wall and plodding along until you reach the landing of the stairs and emerge into open air and weak sunshine. The musty smell dissipates behind you, and you look around, giving a hum of appreciation. This street is much larger than the ones you passed through earlier, and you would imagine it had functioned as some sort of market place or town center. The tall buildings are packed together tight on both sides of the expanse of road, and you are charmed by the first instance of trees you’ve seen since you arrived here. They have been coaxed to grow in a way that forms a silvery green arch over the area, letting in random shafts of sunlight, and you watch the beams of light shifting as you follow the road at a brisk pace.

By the time you pass under an elaborately carved archway, you feel your breath come up short in your chest. When you see a low wall, you gratefully sink down on it. While you rest, you look around in curiosity at this new area. The trees from before are still lining the streets, but the leaves are sparse and dried out, letting in a greater abundance of light from above. The warmth is nice, but the effect is countered by the state of disrepair everything is in. Obviously no one has lived in this area for a long time, you think, even before your extemporaneous arrival. You look up at the upper levels of one of the buildings, wondering if you should briefly go look around the interior, when you get a very brief glimpse of a large shadow figure appearing in one of the windows. You leap to your feet. It is gone before you can even blink, but it is enough to agitate you, and make you very aware that you came here by yourself.

You want to turn around and leave immediately, but you can’t stop yourself from staring hard the remaining windows for any signs that might tell you if what you saw was real, and if so, whether there is enough distance between you and it for you to get away. You now sense a strange energy emanating from this place; whether your mind is playing tricks on you because you are cold and tired, or there is genuinely something present here to validate your uneasiness, you don’t know. But still, your instincts were what pulled you through in the beginning, so you take heed of them and start walking back at a brisk pace. You ignore the soft, indistinct sounds seeming to come from the buildings and quicken your pace until you pass through the archway again, and the murmurs melt away behind you.

Soon you are back to where the foliage is thick and secure overhead, and have talked yourself out of your earlier distress; the glimpse was so brief, it must have been a trick of the light, or nothing at all. So while you are feeling better mentally, you are feeling rather weary physically and would like to return back to the house you’ve been residing in with your friend. You lean against a wall to think for a minute, mentally retracing your steps. As you draw a map in your head, you are surprised at just how far you’ve come out. The thought of the distance you need to cover to get back makes you groan out load, and the sound echoes for a minute before the buildings soak up it up. You jump a little, surprised by the loudness of your own voice reverberating back at you, and then you sigh, quieter, knowing there is nothing to be done except to begin walking. You locate the same passageway with the slippery stairs, re-entering the stairwell and trudging down the steps. A large expanse of open space and fresh air greets you when you emerge on the road connected on the other side, and you continue on. As you take each turn in reverse as well as you can remember, the only sounds besides the scratching of rocks and debris skittering across the ground in erratic intervals are the muffled grinding of your own footsteps.

While you are making progress as quick as you can, your confidence in your memory of the path you took is starting to ebb as the abnormally large moon becomes more and more pronounced against the darkening sky. Upon turning into another somewhat familiar looking alley, your mind draws a blank at the next direction you need to take, and you know you have a serious problem. You lean your forehead against a cold wall, arms slack at your sides and make a frustrated sound in the back of your throat. This time there is not even an echo from the buildings, acknowledging your vexation at your own foolishness. You turn back around and peer off into the dark on either side of you and contemplate what to do. Everything that was new and unique at the beginning of your walk now looks frustratingly similar after all the distance you have covered, and the dying light is not helping matters any. 

You wonder how you might have thought determining how to get back to where you started would be a straight forward process, when you remember how you weaved back and forth through and behind crumbling buildings and narrow passageways, fascinated by the unique architecture and subtle differences and details of different structures. It had not seemed like such a labyrinth when you were coming the other way earlier, but there had been no destination you had in mind then. There was only your intrigue with the symbols carved under arches and near the foundation of houses, the stonework cool and gritty under your hands. But now you are paying for your inattention, and you breathe in deep, clenching and unclenching your fists as if your feelings about your situation could also be released with the opening of your hands. 

The air is chilling rapidly; each breath you take is now coming out as white mist. You glance around in a despairing manner to see of you can recognize any sort of familiar landmark among the homogeneous structures. Rubbing your hands together, you think about your companion; he is almost certainly aware of your prolonged absence by now, and you wonder how he is taking your disappearance, seeing as the two of you had an understanding that you would stay put.

You start shivering, thinking about how things had changed somewhat during the past few weeks, after you finally healed enough to be up and about. While your companion was very pleased with how your injuries were healing, he seemed at a loss at how to handle your sudden restlessness now that physical pain wasn’t forcing you to stay off your feet most hours of the day. You smile slightly, remembering his reaction when he came to check on you, clearly expecting to find you asleep, and instead finding you in a different room of the house, examining one of the many strange devices you found in the room. From then on, he had taken to uncertainly hovering around you whenever he heard the telltale rustling noises signaling you were about to start prowling about, always trying to urge you to lie back, to sit down and rest.

The sentiment behind it was very endearing, but you know whatever distress he had been detecting from you had very little to do with residual aches and pains, but rather how being in an idle state is not a familiar or comfortable for you. While you were recovering, you were content to sleep the days away, but then boredom and pain traded off with each other to torment you in an entirely different way, and you began to look for things to occupy yourself with.

After you exhausted your search of the interior house, and were ready to expand your investigation out of doors, your enthusiasm was met with even more resistance than you flitting between rooms. However, no matter how reluctant he was to see you pass through the front door, you both knew you were eventually going to slip outside with or without his consent; he couldn’t keep an eye on you every hour of the day.

And so, he showed his acquiescence by tugging a heavy cloak around your shoulders, and sticking close to your side as you made your way on shaky legs on your initial tour around the exterior of the house. To your dismay, a ten-minute jaunt left sweat pouring down your face and you gasping for breath. The excursion spelled the end of your activity that day, and you spent the rest of your waking hours inside, slipping in and out of sleep with several blankets pulled up to your chin. Your situation improved, though, with consistent exercise, until you knew your muscles weren’t going to give up on you, and your friend wasn’t afraid to leave you by yourself lest you collapse on the ground with no one around to help you.

After you recovered a good amount of your stamina, you tagged along with your alien friend when he left the house each day, wanting to know where he disappeared to and what he did during the day when he left. You learned that most of his time was spent painstakingly clearing up debris and rubble from what must have been the village he lived in before the events that lead to the other imprisoned aliens you saw during your jailbreak. Based on the remains you can see, it must have been a thriving place. 

You always sat nearby, observing him work. The rigid, distressed on your friend’s face as he did what he could to clean up or salvage (he waved away your attempts to help), made your chest tighten. Then it would tighten in a different way whenever he saw your were watching him (he would always notice), and gave you a little smile. 

In some part due to that, today you had opted to stay settled on a large, flat rock close to the dwelling instead of accompanying him on his usual rounds. You had some thoughts about your situation you wanted to work through, and you decided this could better be done in solitude. Although it embarrassed you to even think it, you were starting to have trouble concentrating on necessary matters while he was in your line of vision. Your eyes were drawn to his form no matter what he seemed to be doing, and you found yourself frequently faking an interest in something behind you just to have an excuse to turn and hide your glowing face. 

So when he gestured for the two of you to go off as usual, and you communicated your intentions to stay by yourself, he seemed surprised, even agitated that he wouldn’t have you with him. He proceeded to linger around you uncertainly for a good hour by your estimation, and kept circling back at regular intervals to check that you were still in the same place. Only when he seemed convinced you were going to stay where you were did each successive inspection start to come further and further apart. At some point he stopped coming around entirely, and you were left with only your thoughts for company.

You spent some time simply breathing in the clean air, and methodically going through each of your concerns until you you reached an impasse; you are stuck in an alien world, and there is the very real possibility that you will life out the rest your life here. Your efforts to think about how to move forward or what you even wanted produced pitiful results, which caused a slight throbbing in your temples. You are not used to being unable to come up with a solution to a problem. You had taken a deep breath, and stood up to stretch. It was best, you had decided, to give the matter more thought another time. Right now there was very little for you to work with, and what you wanted was a distraction, to help your stiff muscles and clear your head. When you had set off, you firmly told yourself you would stay within a modest radius of the residence, and come back in a reasonable amount of time. Your alien friend would never even know you had left. But as you walked on and new observations drew your attention to matters other than promptness, you forgot your intentions.

Now, as you tentatively start walking again, you don’t make it far at all before it darkens so rapidly you can barely see your hand in front of your face, and you are left blinking in disbelief. You look up; while the moon is bright in the sky it provides almost no guidance to objects below it. The unobtrusive sound of soft winds that had accompanied you on your excursion so far have now taken on an eerie quality; logically you know that the sound is just wind, but it makes your heart beat a little faster regardless. Your footsteps are small and hesitant, and there is no way for you to decipher the difference between buildings, period. Everything is an inky black with the barest hint of abstract shapes. When your hand comes into contact with a smooth surface, you flatten your palm against it to ground yourself against the cold sick feeling settling under your skin.

While you are straining your eyes attempting to make sense out of anything, there are light, rapid footsteps behind you. The first thing that comes to mind is the black figure you saw earlier, and you swing around at the same time and a hand grasps your wrist and pulls you forward. The grip is so tight you know that any attempts to pull away will be pointless. Then you are being twisted around and patted down like you are being inspected. The movements stop for a brief interlude, and a voice starts speaking rapidly in a low, distressed tone while whoever is standing in front if you sinks to their knees. 

You are very briefly suspended in a state of disbelief, and then realization comes full circle. The voice that continues speaking is as familiar to you as if you had been hearing it your whole life, and when you slump forward in relief, your companion’s hands move to your shoulders to steady you. You let yourself be handled without any objection while he finishes his inspection of you. When his words taper off as well his movements, you gather he has reached the conclusion you are not injured in anyway. Then it is just the two of you facing each other in the quiet darkness. You can feel his stare on your face even if you cannot see him, so you know the pitch-blackness is no obstacle for him while it renders you completely blind. The silence stretches on and on, and you wish you knew what he was thinking. 

He eventually begins speaking again, but he trails off into silence many times before he seems to find the words he wants. He shifts a little closer before beginning to address you. You stand and listen, lulled by the gentle tone with its fluctuation of syllables and sounds strung together in ways you cannot understand, and the sensation of his skin against yours as he takes your hands in his, occasionally punctuating what you assume is an important point in his speech with a gentle squeeze. 

He pauses when a long, strong rush of wind interrupts the one sided conversations with a moaning howl. You shudder when it hits you, and he draws you to him to shield you from the worst of the current. You move with him, and huddle against his chest, burying your face into his shoulder. There is a brief movement of surprise on his behalf at your reciprocation, but he recovers quickly. You make a happy noise when he folds you into him and the two of you stay pressed against each other for a long, wonderful moment. When he rises from his knees, he scoops you up in his arms, looks around for a minute, and begins to walk. Eyes half open with your face still pressed against his shoulder, you listen to the wind howling in your ears and feel the rocking motion of your companion’s quick steps. You adjust your grip on him and close your eyes. He holds you tighter in return, and takes you home.


End file.
